This weekend's required reading for those who are offended but who aren't afraid to look into the mirror.

Whether you sing in the choir, preach to the choir or cater to the choir ... there are many in the choir who are oblivious to the sour-sounding music the choir makes.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Excerpts:

 As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage. 

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks. 

 1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. 

 6. When I am told about our national heritage or about civilization, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 

 17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.  

For this reason, the word privilege now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.